Like That Cat Stevens Song
by spellmugwump97
Summary: Harry Potter is Tony Stark's kid. They have rocky beginnings. Or, a non-linear flip through their lives together. (The Cat Stevens song is Father and Son, because I'm that original.)
1. The Beginning

This is a snapshot style, non-linear collection of moments. Some will be longer/more linear than others.

I am going to make this as realistic as I can, eg: Sirius will be fuming that Lily cheated on his best friend. Harry will find Malibu too hot. He will be famous with both the muggleborns and the magical kids. Tony won't know what to do with a child. Harry won't pick up science straight away. Tony and Mrs Weasley will have a weird relationship. Kingsley will be shadowing Tony.

But I don't plan on spending 5 chapters going step-by-step through the events of Iron Man, etc, because we've all been there before. I'm going for the best bits only, if I can, and really can't be doing with transcripting all the dialogue. I'm lazy and doing a Masters, what can I say?

Please let me know what you want to see! x

* * *

The first time Harry met his dad, he was wearing sunglasses so big and dark that Harry really assumed, for the sharpest of seconds, that he was blind. Looking back, he would cringe and give himself the allowance that he was only eight, and generally had a strange way of looking at the world in the first place. Having come from Little Whinging, a place of uniform dullness, to the ostentatious palm trees of Malibu, Harry was willing to give his younger self more than a few allowances.

'Tony,' the man holding Harry's had said while shaking his head, 'it's eleven am.' Harry's dad looked down at the glass in his hand, brow creasing.

'Hair of the dog, Obie,' he gulped down the rest of his glass, 'it's a thing.'

Obie muttered something to himself and then looked down at Harry. Harry's hand was getting rather sweaty. He had stopped holding Obie's had back a minute or so ago, after realising it wasn't worth the effort. He let his hand dangle limply in his grip.

There was an awkward silence that fought through even the thick fog of memory. Harry looked back and forth between Tony and Obie, silent and nervous. He didn't know why it was so painful for them all to stand in silence, but it was. Tony scratched his cheek and winced.

'Is that him?' He gestured vaguely in Harry's direction. Harry's shoulders rose instinctually, not used to the attention on him, and even less so from a parent. The whole process of coming to America had been a series of strangers gawking at him without quite realising he knew exactly what they were doing.

'This is Harry, yes.' Obie said, exasperated. He shook the hand that held Harry to him. 'He landed this morning. Didn't you champ?' Harry offered a weak half-smile, eyes fixed on his dad. Obie let go of his sweaty hand and walked over to the counter Tony was standing behind. He whispered so lowly that Harry was sure he wasn't supposed to hear.

'I called you, you were supposed to be at LAX for —'

'Obie, I couldn't be there I was —'

'What? You were what? That's your kid!'

At that, they both looked at harry and stilled. He felt very small under their eyes, blinking away tiredness and fiddling with his t-shirt. 'I'm actually quite tired,' he said quietly, eyes whipping between Tony and Obie. It broke the silence, and, hopefully, allowed Harry an escape.

'No problem, kiddo,' Obie said, grinning so widely Harry thought it must hurt. 'We have a room for you —' He looked over his shoulder at Tony, who blinked widely and shook his head at him. 'But I guess I'll take you. I'm your nanny now, apparently.'

Tony rolled his eyes but said nothing as Harry's other had was swept into Obie's. Harry looked over his shoulder and watched his dad — still such a foreign concept — stare at the melting ice cubes in the bottom of his glass. Obie soon distracted him by instilling an intense worry within Harry's soul about the interview he was supposed to give in a few days' time — with his father, of course.

'Now, bud, Martha will come by tomorrow to help you settle in.' Obie said as they arrived at a tall door upstairs. Harry had been momentarily fascinated by a bright painting to the left of it. His eyes soon followed Obie's large finger, like Uncle Vernon's, pointing towards a door opposite the painting. 'That'll be her room. Yours is through here.'

Turned around, Harry was pushed into his room. He had never seen such large windows, and all he had to compare them to was next-door's new conservatory, which wasn't really comparable in the slightest.

Inside the room was more disappointing. The bedsheets were white, as was everything else. An expanse of white wall lay to both the left and right of the door. Coming from the wallpapered Dudley-mural covered home of the Dursley's, Harry felt uncomfortable with the brightness of it all.

The bed frame was the only piece of colour, along with the bedside table — both wooden. Two small, sad, and similarly brown teddy bears drooped in the corner by the built in wardrobe. Harry wasn't sure who had put them there, but he doubted it was anyone he had met in America yet.

With a heaviness that made Harry wince, Obie patted his shoulder and then squeezed it. 'I'll leave you to get settled in, sport,' he lingered for a second or two more, and then walked off down the hallway in a direction Harry wasn't sure they had come down previously, not bothering to close the door behind him.

Glancing about nervously, Harry padded towards the window and stared out. There was no beach below the window, like he had thought; instead, as he pushed his forehead and nose against the glass and peered down, he saw only blue. He unstuck his head from the window and adjusted his glasses. The sun was blinding him, but he couldn't see any blinds or curtains. He knew he would have been too nervous to touch them even if they were there.

Harry clambered onto the bed, sitting awkwardly upon the pillow before sliding under the duvet while trying to disrupt as little of the sheets as possible. He stared at the open door, and strained to hear anyone approaching.

As he remembered it later on in life, nobody did approach for some time. Harry remembered sniffling a little, holding the corner of the pillow in a fist, and falling asleep eventually out of exhaustion. When he woke up, it was dark, and he was still holding onto the corner of the pillow.


	2. Peter and Harry

Harry emerged from his room, hungover. He was not a big drinker, for this reason – but when Tony and Pepper were schmoozing over canapes in the other room and he was left with a collection of depressed looking heirs to about fifty percent of America's wealth, an uncomfortable suit and Harry Osborn plying him with expensive whiskey, there was nothing else to _do_.

At the very least, there wasn't the usual kids his own age trying desperately to become friends with Tony Stark's son. Harry couldn't understand why, every time, they thought offering a rainbow of drugs was the way to his heart – perhaps he should tell his dad about it to gain brownie points for _not_ accepting.

So few and far between were these events that none of them really knew each other. Knowing _of_ each other was a given – most of them popped up in magazines as the hot new couple every few months – but opportunities to sit down and talk were few and far between and they generally ended up being secreted into a side room by their parents after the formalities of 'Oh, Angelica is going to Harvard Law School' and 'Well, Percy invented the cure to allergies last week' were over. At least Harry's dad knew what it was like and laughed at his grumbling.

Harry Osborn picking the lock of a tall drinks cabinet with some Kennedy Harry himself couldn't remember drifted through his mind as he padded to the kitchen. The light of his bedroom window, of the bright snow, was burnt onto Harry's eyelids. He hadn't asked FRIDAY to close the blinds last night and he didn't think he'd ever felt so bitter about something in his life.

Voices – far too loud voices – drifted from the kitchen.

'Tony Stark receives letters? Paper letters?' Came a bemused young voice.

Harry heard his dad laugh sardonically. 'They're not for me,' he replied, over the sound of metal clattering. It suddenly occurred to Harry that he couldn't quite remember getting home last night, and he wasn't sure Tony would be happy with him either. But, he was hungry. He wanted a bacon sandwich. If he had to get shouted at while he was getting it, he would have to find a way to cope.

'Oh look,' was Harry's greeting, 'up after four. A new record.' Harry squinted at his dad and frowned. He felt he wasn't entirely to blame. What did he expect, leaving bored teenagers for hours? He knew Harry didn't cope with boredom well.

'I just want food and water,' Harry said placatingly, still ignoring the other boy in the room through sheer tiredness. He raised his arms in deference. 'I'm sorry, but it was actually Harry Osborn's fault –'

It was a slip of the tongue that made Tony's eye twitch. He raised his eyes to the ceiling as Harry cringed. Rubbing a hand through his hair, Tony help up a hand to stop Harry's spluttering excuses to make up for mentioning the man who had, twenty years ago, stolen his dad's research and gotten away with it even when it ended up in the hands of Justin Hammer, who clearly didn't have that kind of brain power.

'This is Peter,' he said, gesturing to the kid sitting awkwardly at the breakfast bar with a sheepish expression. 'And this is a letter from Hermione.' Tony slid a thick piece of parchment across the worktop which Harry grabbed.

Peter's hair was a mess, as was his cracked phone. He was wearing a t shirt under a shirt under a hoodie, with a dirty backpack lying neglected on its side with a crumpled sheet of equations sticking out. He looked supremely uncomfortable at Harry staring at him. Harry couldn't figure out why he was here.

'Dad …' he said slowly, turning to look at Tony by the coffee machine, glaring at Harry while pouring him a cup. 'Did you adopt another kid?'

Peter made an incomprehensible sound with his mouth hanging open while Harry's dad rolled his eyes. 'No, Christ.' He paused. 'He's Spider-Man,'

'What!' Peter squeaked, eyes glancing back and forth between Harry and his dad.

'What!' Harry shouted, eyes glancing back and forth between his dad and Peter.

'He was going to find out, he has a knack with finding things out that he shouldn't,' Tony said to Peter, gesturing to Harry who had decided he was far too hungover for this.

'What have you been doing! I've been at Hogwarts for, like, three months!'

'Hogwarts?' Peter asked, brow crumpled.

'Boarding school,' Harry and Tony replied in unison. Tony carried on; 'it's called research, keeping an eye out,'

Harry was baffled. 'I can't deal with this,' he said blankly, forgetting about his bacon sandwich and clutching his new coffee with hard hands. 'I come back after Umbridge and I get this, my dad harbouring a fugitive superhero – no offence,'

Peter didn't look offended. 'Um, I'm not actually living here. I just came to work on my robot.' Harry stopped still.

'What kind of robot?' He asked, thumb stroking the handle of his coffee cup. He could feel his dad looking smug in the background, but it happened so often he didn't let it bother him.

'Well – I,' Peter looked owlish as he was put on the spot. His phone buzzed with a notification that he didn't so much as glance at while he stared back at Harry. 'I don't know yet. I haven't even started coding. I –'

'Coding.' Harry interrupted, eyes narrowed. 'Let me sleep for an hour. I'll be one hour.' He turned and left his coffee to grow cold on the side. He left the room for the safety of his duvet.

'He'll be back to sleep in under a minute too,' he heard Tony say in amazement, 'how do you guys do it?' There was a clink of glass before Harry turned down the corridor. 'Anyway, Spider-kid, you've won him over.'

'Have I?' Peter asked.

'For better or worse,' Tony replied, Harry hearing the grin in his voice.


End file.
